Leeds best for recycling?
I find this story hard to believe - EST (Energy Saving Trust) are reporting:
“Leeds has come first in a list of the top English regions for recycling.
The city recycled 17.3 per cent of all of its household waste during 2005-06, the study by union GMB revealed.”
A quick straw poll around the office confirms my own personal experience - recycling collections from domestic properties are sketchy at best. If the figures are based on volume, they could be explained by Leeds’ better than average household waste recycling centres of which there are 11* dotted around the city. Kudos has to go to the householders for transporting their waste to these centres. The council does not pick up glass from domestic properties - so all bottles have to be taken to bottle banks. They will pick up plastic, card, paper and cans. Virtually everything else can be recycled at the centres (including batteries, spectacles, clothing and ink cartridges).
My thoughts on this are mixed - I would love to be able to put all my recycling in a box by the front door and have it picked up once a week. However, if the numbers above are true, then maybe investment in really good recycling centres is a better use of public money?
* I tried searching for a photo of one of the sites on Flickr to illustrate them. If you put ‘leeds’ and ‘waste’ into Flickr search engine you just end up with lots of photos of drunk strangers.
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[...] covered include recycling (I covered recent figures on Leeds here), lightbulbs, plastic bags, food, carbon allowances (DEFRA’s rough guide available here [...]